OpenClaw High Memory Usage — Diagnosis & Fixes

OpenClaw is designed to be lightweight, but certain configurations and workloads can cause memory usage to climb. Here's how to diagnose what's consuming memory and get it back under control.

Problem

Your OpenClaw process is consuming unexpectedly high RAM — often noticed when your machine slows down, or when monitoring tools flag the process. Common symptoms: the openclaw or node process using 500MB+, memory gradually climbing over hours or days, or OOM (out of memory) errors in gateway logs.

Step 1: Identify the Memory Consumer

# Check OpenClaw process memory
ps aux | grep openclaw

# More detailed breakdown
top -pid $(pgrep -f openclaw)

# Or use htop for interactive view
htop

Note which process is high: the gateway process, a specific session, or a cron job that's still running.

Step 2: Check for Stuck Sessions

Sessions that don't terminate cleanly can accumulate memory:

openclaw sessions list
# Look for sessions that have been "running" for hours

openclaw sessions list --status running
# Should show 0 or 1 active session normally

Kill any stuck sessions:

openclaw sessions kill --id [session-id]

Step 3: Check Cron Job Accumulation

Cron jobs that fire faster than they complete can stack up sessions:

openclaw cron list
# Check if any crons have very frequent schedules (every minute)

openclaw gateway logs --tail 100 | grep "cron"
# Look for overlapping cron executions

If you have crons running every minute with heavy tasks, space them out:

# Before: every minute (risky)
openclaw cron update --name "my-task" --schedule "* * * * *"

# After: every 5 minutes (safer)
openclaw cron update --name "my-task" --schedule "*/5 * * * *"

Step 4: Check Log File Sizes

du -sh ~/.openclaw/logs/
ls -lh ~/.openclaw/logs/

Log files can grow unbounded and cause memory pressure when loaded. Rotate or truncate large logs:

# Truncate gateway log if it's huge
> ~/.openclaw/logs/gateway.log

# Or configure log rotation in openclaw.json
# "logs": { "maxSizeMb": 100, "rotate": true }

Step 5: Limit Context Window Size

Large workspace files loaded into every session increase memory proportionally. Audit your workspace file sizes:

du -sh ~/.openclaw/workspace/*.md
wc -l ~/.openclaw/workspace/MEMORY.md

If MEMORY.md is very large (1000+ lines), trim it. Keep only genuinely important long-term context and archive old entries to dated memory files:

# Archive old MEMORY.md entries
mv ~/.openclaw/workspace/MEMORY.md ~/.openclaw/workspace/memory/archive-$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md
# Start fresh with core memories only
touch ~/.openclaw/workspace/MEMORY.md

Step 6: Restart the Gateway

Sometimes the simplest fix is a clean restart, which clears any accumulated state:

openclaw gateway restart

If memory is still high after restart, the issue is with a specific workload — check which cron or session is the culprit using the steps above.

Step 7: Monitor Going Forward

openclaw cron add \
  --name "memory-monitor" \
  --schedule "0 */6 * * *" \
  --agent main \
  --task "Check the current memory usage of the openclaw process. If it's above 500MB, log a warning to ~/logs/memory-alerts.md with timestamp and current value."

Configuration Tuning

For permanently high memory on constrained hardware, reduce session concurrency in your openclaw.json:

{
  "sessions": {
    "maxConcurrent": 2,
    "timeoutMs": 120000
  }
}

Ready to go deeper? The OpenClaw Playbook covers this in detail — grab your copy for $9.99.